‘I was on stage and started kicking!’: Les Mis’s Lucy Jones plays pregnant woman and defies gravity at Glastonbury | stage

Congratulations on your pregnancy. Have you been singing to your belly?
Kind of unintentionally, because I’m back on Les Mis so by osmosis, it gets Boublil and Schoenberg every night. I hope she comes out waving the red flag and walking as soon as she walks. I didn’t sit down and sing to her, but I sing all the time and everything is hers now.

You will perform your biggest solo concert to date, at the London Palladium. How do you put a set list together?
It depends on whether you work for someone or for yourself. You get to do what other people want a lot of the time, which is totally fine – most of the things I get asked to do are from my catalog and I love that. Just one or two songs that fill me with dread if I see them on the order sheet. To be honest, I always keep in touch with them and they are fine anyway. But putting a show like this together is something completely different because it’s about me and my life. The concert is based on the ideas we had last year for my Glastonbury set where there was a lot of music to music, fast introductions, and keeping things moving. It was fitting for that gig but this time I’m exploring what these songs mean and who I am now. I will speak to the audience in a different way than I did before. I have shied away from singing more than one song from the same show in the past. But I’m playing the London Palladium while holding my daughter. And Jenna in Waitress is going through everything while holding her baby. I don’t want to miss the opportunity to sing songs that really relate to what’s going on, so there will definitely be more than one song from Waitress.

What does palladium itself mean to you?
I always knew it was the pinnacle. The history in the walls of that building! She enters and can almost hear the whispers of her secrets. Growing up, I listened to Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli’s double album Live at the London Palladium. I’ve performed there a lot with other artists. Every time I walked through the stage door, my stomach would turn

It’s rare for a musical theater star to play Glastonbury. Were you worried that audiences would be too cool for musicals?
never. I don’t have that fear anymore. Musicals We are amazing! And the people who say they’re not cool… well, they’re not our people anyway. I knew there would be a lot of people who would be very excited to defy gravity in a field. We weren’t even breaking the mold, we were creating a new one. And yes, there may be hundreds of thousands of people on site, but there are hundreds and hundreds of things you can do at any given moment. So I was a little concerned that even though there were a lot of people who might have enjoyed it, there might be something else they would also enjoy somewhere else at the same time. On the first night, I was walking towards the stage and saying to my partner George: “Fucking hell, what if no one comes?” It’s a total kick! But then it’s immediately like, no, here I am with the best music director ever, John Ringer, and the perfect musicians for this place. At least my partner and parents will be there. And my makeup artist. So that’s four! But we came out and there were about 5,000 people trying to break into a 3,000-person tent. This is a true testament that musicals are cool now.

How was your return to Les Misérables, which was your training ground for musical theatre?
I played Cosette in 2010. This is my sixth time in Les Mis and I play Fantine, who fights until her last breath for what is good and right for her child. To do this now with my daughter is crazy. The company has been incredible. The costume department makes sure I’m comfortable. There are a lot of fights involved with Fantine. They have to look terrible, and the audience has to gasp. The fight direction team and choreographers are constantly working and wondering if things are good and are they. That night I was on stage at the end of the show for the finale. It’s one of my favorite moments in musical theatre. I’m not a religious person, but we sing the line “To love someone else/It means seeing the face of God.” It’s a three-part harmony and it always takes my breath away, which isn’t helpful when she’s singing, but it’s a beautiful moment. My daughter started kicking at that moment. She was really going for it. Having her there with me, in the middle of it all, has changed the way I play this role.

As a former member of Elphaba on stage, what do you think of the second Wicked movie?
The first was amazing and the second is still truly magical. There are some amazing performances in it. I think once you see a world that’s so beautifully created and takes your breath away in the way that the first movie did for all of us, it’s very difficult to bring us back and reboot that to a new level which I think is probably what people expected. But you can’t – we already know, we went in and were blown away by it. I would say let this continue and get you through the second movie. I’ve seen it a few times and really enjoyed it.

Is there some kind of WhatsApp group for Elphabas?
I don’t want to reveal anything but… there’s definitely a connection between us! And it’s not just in London, it’s all over the world. I was invited into this fold when I booked the job – and it has continued which is fantastic.